Not much information on the site... There is a "Pay Dues" button but no prices... Is that for membership? Is the training from members free? When and what does one pay for?What about the 25wpm requirement, I guess it doesn't apply to students... Would members help me get to that speed?

Not much information on the site... There is a "Pay Dues" button but no prices... Is that for membership? Is the training from members free? When and what does one pay for?What about the 25wpm requirement, I guess it doesn't apply to students... Would members help me get to that speed?

Gil.

Looks to me like you join their academy (next one is Jab-Feb), learn the code, get your speed up to 25wpm, then get sponsored by 4 other members so you can be part of the club.

I'm 54 and just started learning the Code a while ago. I guess you never really stop learning. Anyway, here's what I did.

I learned the characters and got up to 5wpm with G4FON. I used Kotch type speeds: dots & dashes at 15wpm speed, but 5wpm for letter and word speeds. It starts you off with a few letters and you graduate to more letters as you learn until you are doing all the letters, numbers,etc. I imaging lcwo.net would be just as good.

To increase speed I increased the dot & dash speed to 20wpm and started copying at faster speed. I hit speed walls and then some time later the wall would fall on its own. Taking a break for a week is OK and may even help, but never give up.

I ran into another wall where I was much slower copying random stuff like call signs. Recently I started using lcwo.net and especially the Call Sign Training. It's brutal but effective. It gives you a call sign. The next on is 1wpm faster or slower depending on if you got the last one correct or not. So, it stresses you and keeps you just outside your comfort zone. This really helped me.

Thought I'd jump in here with some of my experiences.The code requirement kept me out of this hobby for many years since i was not sure if all of the effort to learn Morse code would be worth it. I took all three tests at the same sitting and passed after a friend told me that there was no code! Now that I have been in the hobby for a couple of years, I realized I do want to learn Morse code now that I can see some of the advantages. Besides, I am rather competitive and it bugs me that others can do something that I can't do!

However, it's not an easy road at age 59. I try to do 15-30 minutes of copy practice a day now for about 6 months.I am partial to the computer programs, since they allow me to practice on my own schedule. The two that I like the best are the G4FON and "just Learn Morse Code" (http://www.justlearnmorsecode.com/.

The second one has a 'mill" for typing what I hear @ 20wpm , then it grades me. very cool...

When I am "in the zone" , there is just me and the sounds. It's like an altered state of consciousness with extreme auditory focus. It definitely feels different.

I have not tried sending yet. I intend to hook up a keyer to the computer and have DM780 read out what I'm keying so i can be confident that my "fist" can be understood before I go "live".

Wayne, I used W1AW's code practice sessions to help me with the code starting out. I still use the practice sessions to gain speed, since I was QRT for almost 10 years. Tough to beat the price, the code is sent perfectly and in plain text from the ARRL's station. The practice sessions do include puncuation marks and numbers which are always good to know, IMO. Here is the W1AW practice schedule for the summer. Good Luck in learning the code.

Stay away from the ARRL Code Practice. You cannot learn the code at such slow speeds and I am surprised they still hold onto to this ancient practice. Learn the code at 25wpm and yes LCWO is a good way to learn but another and more beneficial is enroll in CW Academy. www.cwops.org and sign up. You will learn by the sound of letters and more so words instead of the dot dash mentality of the ARRL Code Practice. CW Academy will have you at 25wpm or more within a month.

Not much information on the site... There is a "Pay Dues" button but no prices... Is that for membership? Is the training from members free? When and what does one pay for?What about the 25wpm requirement, I guess it doesn't apply to students... Would members help me get to that speed?

Gil.

Looks to me like you join their academy (next one is Jab-Feb), learn the code, get your speed up to 25wpm, then get sponsored by 4 other members so you can be part of the club.

Eric

You don't have to join the "club". If you want to learn the code they will teach you at no charge. The only thing it will cost you is your time and dedication. The teacher's are not paid. They are volunteer's helping other's learn the code in a proficient and correct manner. You should look at the bright side instead of being cynical. Now go buy a key and throw your mic away.

You will learn by the sound of letters and more so words instead of the dot dash mentality of the ARRL Code Practice.

W1AW does at least transmit words with punctuation in the right places, not the random senseless character strings the Koch systems generate. It's so much easier to learn to read when the words you read make sense.

You will learn by the sound of letters and more so words instead of the dot dash mentality of the ARRL Code Practice.

W1AW does at least transmit words with punctuation in the right places, not the random senseless character strings the Koch systems generate. It's so much easier to learn to read when the words you read make sense.

What "systems" are you referring to ?

The Koch method uses random characters, but that doesn't mean that a tool capable of using Koch's method offers only random characters.

Just Learn Morse Code is a good program for using the Koch method, but it is also lets you you choose between plenty of other methods if you want to. You can practice groups of five characters, or any number of characters you select. You can adjust the weight of individual characters, to get more practice with those you struggle with. The 1000 most frequently used words in English are available with a simple menu selection. You can choose the top 10, 78, 836 or however many you want to. You can use common HAM abbreviations and Q codes. You can use your own word/phrase/sentence lists. You can paste in any text you want to. No matter which method you choose, your performance can be measured - if you want that.

You can generate audio files from all of those sources, at the exact speed you want.

No static file library can ever compete with the flexibility of a well designed computer program. That's a fact, not an opinion.

The Koch method uses random characters, but that doesn't mean that a tool capable of using Koch's method offers only random characters.

I'm glad JLMC (and the other tools) have those other options. I havn't used G4FON or JLMC much because they don't work very well under wine (of whatever flavour - I've tried several) on either Mac or Linux, and I don't have any Windows PCs, but I have used LCWO to make mp3 files to help me learn Morse. The other options available deserve more attention.

Unfortunately, it's the Koch method that gets pushed, as if it were some miracle teaching method. I stuck at the Koch lessons (on LCWO, as it happens) far too long because folk kept pushing, saying "keep at the lessons, don't quit, you'll get there in the end". I should have ditched Koch, with its random characters and learn-a-character, add-a-character approach, far sooner. In retrospect, it should have been obvious to me that Koch wasn't teaching me Morse effectively by the time I'd been at it for a couple of months. That said, even the Koch learn-a-character, add-a-character approach would probably have worked better for me if, right from the start, it had used words and abbreviations (with callsigns and proper placement of punctuation once the character set included them) rather than random characters, though you'd need to re-arrange the progression to make that work well.

...and to answer the original poster's question "Can I learn CW with LCWO.net?" I'd say "Yes, you probably can, but look at ALL the options available, not just the Koch lessons, and look at other programs as well, but if you can find a real live human teacher who knows and uses Morse and is willing to teach you in person, chances are that'll be the best option."

I found it tended to hang after sending the first word unless there was no difference between character and word speeds, when it usually didn't hang. G4FON did likewise, so I assume the problem's somewhere in the way wine is working with the underlying sound system, and that's probably hardware related. Maybe I'm just unlucky that the two systems I've tried it on have both had the same problem...

I am going to jump on this band wagon with a few comments.1) as most good CW ops will tell you. CW is a language 2) In yesteryear we learned to write on a piece of paper with multiple 3 lines on the paper and a very large pencil. We also learned words at the same time. (we already know the words now)3) When we learned to hear and speak our native language, absolutely NO one slowed down their speech for us to recognize and relate to word to something we could understand. They were sounded out as syllables for us to put together. Again the syllable's were not slowed down, nor were the charactors contained inside the syllable's. We already know the words and meaning of words, so we don't need to learn that part again.

I learned code by learning the alphabet at slow speed. I found that this extra time between charactors allowed me to develop a very bad habit, causing me to drop it for years. That of converting the sound to the character in my head. I think the original poster used the term, "process the character" stop the processing.. Imagine learning to hear by only being allowed to hear each character then being forced to put each one together. That is how we learned to read, and write not how we learned to speak, or hear. Do you want to learn to read and write radio, I don't think so.The worst example you could ever develop hear a dit da think dot dash recognise it as a A write an A read what we wrote one charactor at a time till you know the word.

Its really simple.. learn code at 20+ WPM from the start. forget about koch or any other method that is unnatural. As you learn the sounds you will start putting together easily recognized groups (syllables). It takes less time to learn a language at normal speech speed, than another way. write down only things you want need to know.. call, time, name, freq. speak the language, don't learn to read/write it.

Its really simple.. learn code at 20+ WPM from the start. forget about koch or any other method that is unnatural.

That's fine advice for folk who really have never encountered Morse before, but for many of us who have, it's akin to saying "I wouldn't start from here" when asked for directions. For a fair proportion of folk wanting to learn Morse, the problem is not how to avoid the bad habits, it's how to break them, because they're already there.

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